Blue Moon rising for Manchester City fan Menelik Watson at the annual National Football League draft

Menelik Watson remembers the worst days of growing up in abject poverty on one
of Britain’s toughest inner-city estates, the days when he would rip open
tomato ketchup sachets and suck out the contents because he was so hungry.

True Blue: Manchester City fan Menelik Watson will discover his fate at the annual National Football League draftPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

He thinks about seeing his ankle bone sticking through his flesh after an accident as a kid and the doctors telling him his leg might need to be amputated and that he could forget the thought of playing sport again, let alone turning out for his beloved Manchester City.

He recalls how his brothers ended up in prison, how he might easily have gone the same way if not for the love of his mum and how he found an escape in sport, first in basketball and then in boxing, determined to find the job which would ensure his baby daughter would never have to want for anything.

Then he pictures the day, just 20 months ago, when he pitched up at a college for an American football trial, not even knowing the rules nor how to put on the shoulder pads.

On Thursday, all those visions of an extraordinary and emotional journey from the Anson estate in Longsight will come into focus at the Radio City Music Hall in New York.

That is where Watson, accompanied by mum Novlyn, could be elevated into one of the hottest young properties in American sport on a contract worth up to $3 million a year.

The occasion is the annual National Football League draft, where clubs gather to cherry pick the best young players. Watson – all 6ft 5in, 310lb of him – is seen as such a brilliantly explosive, if raw, prospect as an offensive tackle that he could be a coveted first or second round pick, which should result in him becoming the first genuine “Made in Britain” gridiron star.

Yet ask if he needs to pinch himself over this fairytale, Watson just laughs: “Not really. Honestly, I haven’t done anything. I wouldn’t call myself a star yet.”

But he is. The story of the 24-year-old with the 24-carat talent, the gold tooth and the diamond nature has already delighted the US, even if it is harder to understand when Watson regales them with his 100mph Mancunian accent.

“The hard times have helped drive me on to succeed,” says Watson, beginning his fairytale with how his dad, a Rastafarian, left for Ethiopia, leaving mum Novlyn to struggle to find work and control four tough lads, who gravitated to the local gangs.

“Two have been in and out of prison – one’s coming out soon – and my oldest half-brother has been in too,” he recalls. “I’m not perfect myself, did some bad things, been on the street corner but I always had something, a good spirit around me, which kept me out of trouble.”

Novlyn was that spirit. “I saw what it was doing to Mum when my brothers hit the street and I never wanted to add to that stress.

"Some consider me a mummy’s boy but I love my mum and feel I owe it to her to do something positive and see her smile. That’s my motivation.”

Watson sounds like a born fighter. “In my first scrap at primary school, I got my a--- whipped by an older kid but after that I took no s--- from nobody. Funny, I was a big-time fighter with a big-time temper but was never a bully and always protected the younger kids.”

Now he just protects valuable quarterbacks. A good defensive midfielder, the youngster fought back from a horrific, freak injury after a bad tackle by a schoolmate when he was 13.

“The doctor said they almost amputated it because they were worried about the complications if they tried to put the ankle back together. They told me I shouldn’t play sport again. I was just happy to have my leg at all.”

Once walking again after complex surgery, though, he defied the medics, discovered basketball and made such dramatic strides that Rob Orellana, an American coach, spotted him, took Watson to the basketball academy he ran in the Canary Islands and became his father figure.

Indeed, Watson’s four-year-old daughter, who lives in Manchester with her mother, was named Orellana after him.

American colleges called for Watson but his basketball career stalled at New York’s Marist college and, even though Oscar De La Hoya’s old mentor Robert Alcazar was mightily impressed by his ferocious heavyweight power after a trial in the ring, he decided against boxing, too.

Instead, hooked after watching a college gridiron game featuring Florida State University, he rang a college coach at Saddleback in California and turned up for a trial.

The rest has been monumental. Raw but blistering performances after Florida State snapped him up will ensure the boy who turned up in the US with just a rucksack and a duffel bag now becomes a multi-millionaire.

All that matters to Watson, though, he says, is that he will have a job at last.

“There were times when Orellana’s mum would call me and it would hurt me as a man more than anything that I wasn’t able to provide for her. Those days are over; she won’t ever have to worry about things like that ever again.”

The idea of being an English sporting pioneer – just like Croydon’s Olympic discus finalist Lawrence Okoye, Crawley’s Tom Wort and another Mancunian, Eze Obiora, who could also all land NFL homes in the draft – woos Watson.

“I hope to come back and set up some camps because there are a lot of kids of all different races and nationalities in Britain who can’t make it into football and just think their sporting life is over,” Watson says.

American football, he says, will learn to understand all about hard-nosed, tough English kids.

“No, I won’t go too billy big time,” he laughs, when he reflects on how emotional it will be to hand over most of his first massive wage packet to his mum.

“Listen, I still bleed blue. Always have. It’s never leaving me, trust me. I’ll always be a Man City fan and a Manchester boy.”